Hackers stole credit card numbers belonging to as many as 1.5 million MasterCard and Visa customers, Global Payments, Inc. confirmed on Sunday. The international credit card processor was blocked by Visa after it reported the possibility of a major security breach on Friday. The company did not indicate how the hackers gained access to its system or who might be responsible for the attack. “Based on the forensic analysis to date, network monitoring and additional security measures, the company believes that this incident is contained,” the firm told The Wall Street Journal while noting that cardholder names, addresses and Social Security numbers were not compromised. The company did say that the credit card numbers were downloaded during the attack rather than just being accessed, however, indicating that the perpetrators may intend to use the information to create counterfeit credit cards. Affected Visa and MasterCard customers have not yet been notified that their account information was stolen.

Executive assistant director of the FBI Shawn Henry, who after more than two decades is preparing to leave the bureau, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that computer criminals are too talented and current defensive measures are too weak to stop them. “We’re not winning,” he said, claiming that the current public and private approach to fighting off hackers is “unsustainable.” Congress is currently considering two competing bills that are designed to strengthen critical U.S. infrastructures such as power plants and nuclear reactors. Henry believes that companies must make major changes in the way they use computer networks to avoid further damage to national security and the economy, however. He said too many companies don’t recognize the financial and legal risks they are taking by operating vulnerable networks. “I don’t see how we ever come out of this without changes in technology or changes in behavior, because with the status quo, it’s an unsustainable model,” Henry said. “Unsustainable in that you never get ahead, never become secure, never have a reasonable expectation of privacy or security.” More →

Hackers from the notorious group “Anonymous Operations” claim to have taken down the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s website shortly after 3:00 p.m. EST on Friday. “CIA TANGO DOWN: cia.gov,” a member of Anonymous posted to one of the group’s Twitter accounts. Anonymous’s motivation for this most recent cyberattack on the CIA is unclear, but this high-profile hit could be one of the group’s most significant attacks yet. As of the time of this writing, cia.gov was still offline. More →

Zappos on Sunday confirmed that hackers breached the company’s servers and accessed personal data belonging to many of its customers. The Amazon-owned shoe retailer known for top-notch service and surprising customers with express shipping at no extra cost confirmed that personal data from 24 million accounts was accessed during a recent security breach. The hackers gained access to range of sensitive data including user names, encrypted passwords, customer names, email addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of credit card numbers. The company stated that full credit card numbers were not compromised. As a security measure, Zappos reset the passwords of all affected customers and sent out emails alerting them to the situation. The company’s full email to customers follows below. More →

Following a period of peace after weeks of cyberattacks launched against various Sony-run online networks, Sony has confirmed that hackers are once again targeting the company’s digital properties. The electronics giant said on Wednesday that it discovered a “large number” of sign-in attempts on its PlayStation Network, Sony Online Entertainment and Sony Entertainment Network between October 7th and the 10th. According to Sony, approximately 93,000 accounts were compromised when valid log-in details were verified during what appears to have been a brute force attack. The company says it has locked the affected accounts and that credit card data tied to the compromised accounts was not at risk. More →

A breach of Dutch SSL certificate authority DigiNotar is reportedly much bigger than initially thought, with more than 200 digital certificates having been stolen in July by hackers who breached the company’s network. Using the stolen certificates, hackers can potentially intercept and even alter data Internet users believe to be secure and encrypted. “About 200 certificates were generated by the attackers,” Dutch security expert Hans Van de Looy told Computerworld, citing anonymous sources. Van de Looy says certificates for mozilla.com, yahoo.com and torproject.org were among those obtained by the hackers. Mozilla’s Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development, confirmed the breach on Thursday. “DigiNotar informed us that they issued fraudulent certs for addons.mozilla.org in July, and revoked them within a few days of issue,” Nightingale said in a statement. BGR reported on Wednesday that the Iranian government has allegedly been using one of the stolen certificates to spy on Gmail users, and at that time the full extent of the DigiNotar breach was unknown. The compromised certificates have all revoked by DigiNotar, but not all Web browsers check for revoked certificates so the impact of this breach will likely be ongoing for some time. More →

A security expert at Italian security firm AIR Sicurezza Informatica claims to have found a security flaw in Google’s new social network that allows hackers to potentially use Google+ servers to execute DDoS attacks. Simone Quatrini explained the flaw on the IHTeam Security Blog, and he wrote a script that can perform the attack, repeatedly prompting Google’s server to send requests to the target site. DDoS attacks, or distributed denial-of-service attacks, flood a web server with requests in an effort to prevent it from functioning. Such attacks require appropriate resources and bandwidth to execute, and Google servers would obviously have more than enough of these resources to launch a significant attack. More →

Notorious hacker collective “Anonymous Operations” on Sunday published data it claims to have obtained by breaching a server belonging to Apple. The data, which consisted of 27 usernames and passwords, was allegedly taken during from surveys stored on an Apple server. Though the group said on one of its Twitter accounts that it is “busy elsewhere,” and therefore will seemingly not be targeting Apple again in the near future, it claims to have exploited a security flaw common to several companies when it gained access to Apple’s server. Anonymous said the breach was part of its AntiSec movement, short for anti-security, which is aimed at “exposing corporate and government data and humiliating security firms.” More →

The infamous group of “hacktivists” known as Anonymous Operations on Thursday launched a new tool to aid its digital crusade against targeted governments and corporations. Dubbed “HackerLeaks,” the new site is a tool hackers can use to distribute data anonymously, and it adopts the model popularized by WikiLeaks. Hacker groups like the now-defunct LulzSec used a variety of tools to disseminate the spoils of their cyberattacks, but Anonymous explains that their tool has a number of benefits. “Anonymous and the [People’s Liberation Front] have already established connections to the media outlets that can help better expose important data, and that they hope to also provide ‘unique and enlightening analysis,'” the group said in a statement. HackerLeaks it the latest addition to Anonymous’ movement known as “AntiSec,” which is aimed at “exposing corporate and government data and humiliating security firms.” More →

A recent online security breach involving the left of 360,000 credit card numbers will cost Citigroup $2.7 million, the company confirmed to U.S. government officials on Monday. Hackers infiltrated Citigroup servers last month and stole account numbers and personal information associated with over 360,000 Citi-branded credit cards. According to Citigroup, personal information and card numbers from approximately 3,400 cardholders was subsequently used to make about $2.7 million in unauthorized purchases. Citigroup stated that affected customers would be reimbursed for the fraudulent charges. No arrests have been made in association with the breach. More →

A hacker known as “The Jester” claims to have revealed the identity of a LulzSec member who may be the group’s leader. Thirty-year-old Xavier Kaotico, also known as Xavier de Leon or “sabu,” has been outed as the hacker prankster group’s leader, though his role and involvement with LulzSec has not been confirmed. The man allegedly lives or has recently lived in New York City, and is an independant IT consultant specializing in Python programming, Linux development, network security and exploit development. LulzSec, a small group of hackers that has become the focus of the international technology media over the past few weeks, has claimed responsibility for carrying out a number of malicious breaches. Recent LulzSec targets include websites belonging to Sony, Citigroup, the CIA and the U.S. Senate. After a public spat between the two high-profile hacker groups, LulzSec united with “Anonymous Operations” to wage a cyber war against the U.S. government, stating, “Sitting pretty on cargo bays full of corrupt booty, they think it’s acceptable to condition and enslave all vessels in sight. Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.” LulzSec has not directly addressed the allegation that Kaotico is its leader, though it has posted messages to its Twitter account mocking The Jester, who calls himself a “Hacktivist for good. Obstructing the lines of communication for terrorists, sympathizers, fixers, facilitators, and other general bad guys.” More →

Call it a meeting of minds or call it an unholy matrimony — in either event, the recent rash of high-profile breaches is about to get an adrenaline shot. Hacktivist group Anonymous and a crew of emerging merry hackers known as are joining forces to target the dissemination of government secrets and the defacement of other websites such as those belonging to banks. “As we’re aware, the government and whitehat security terrorists across the world continue to dominate and control our Internet ocean,” LulzSec said in a statement on Monday. “Sitting pretty on cargo bays full of corrupt booty, they think it’s acceptable to condition and enslave all vessels in sight. Our Lulz Lizard battle fleet is now declaring immediate and unremitting war on the freedom-snatching moderators of 2011.” Operation Anti-Security — or AntiSec, as the group has dubbed the mission on Twitter — encourages fellow hackers to “open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path.” Hit the break for Lulz Security’s full statement. More →

BGR has provided extensive coverage of an ongoing saga that has seen numerous digital properties belonging to Sony fall under attack. To date, personal information belonging to well over 100 million Sony customers has been compromised, and nearly 13 million credit card numbers have been stolen. For IT professionals or other tech enthusiasts with weak stomachs, we can understand if reading one story after another about Sony’s security woes might make you a bit queasy. As such, a new site launched recently that has you covered. Hassonybeenhackedthisweek.com answers a single question for those who simply want to cut to the chase: Has Sony been hacked this week? The answer right now, by the way, is “yes.” More →